The Guilds of Arkaya

Faction Affinity: Guild Competition

• Guilds represent political ideologies instead of parties.

• Elections in the senate occur every 10 turns instead of 20 and it is easier to unlock ideologies. (Example Text: Elections occur twice as often. Ideologies are 15% easier to unlock)

• Elections that result in a change of Senate leadership grants an FIDSI bonus until the next election. (Example text: +15% FIDSI production until the next election when changing elected leaders in the Senate)

Faction Traits:

• Mutual Trade: Trade agreements between factions have increased effectiveness based on the number of guilds present in elections. (Example text: +10% trade agreement income for both factions per guild in the Senate)

• Diplomatic Strategem: Decrease diplomacy costs on agreements between factions with the status of peace or alliance based on the number of guilds present in elections. (Example text: -10% influence cost on agreements with peace or alliance factions per guild in the Senate)

• Guilds (ideologies) provide certain bonuses based on their size within the empire.

  • Guild of Industry: Bonus Industry production when larger industry systems are near eachother.
  • Guild of Ecology: Bonus Food production when no military vessels are present in a star system.
  • Guild of Science: Bonus Science production the more ideologies are present in the empire.
  • Guild of Theology: Bonus hero effectiveness in star systems with a larger the proportion of religious population.
  • Guild of Pacifism: Bonus Influence generation for each faction at peace/alliance.
  • Guild of Militarism: Bonus fleet effectiveness in owned star systems with military units defending them at the cost of FIDSI production.

Description (200 words or less):

Initially starting out as a competition between rival guilds on the Arkayan homeworld, the Guilds of Arkaya have erupted into the galactic stage through the harnessing of dust. A central hub for trade, the guilds have long been a cornerstone in maintaining the economy between peaceful Arkayan peoples. Growing in strength, they formed a system of government focusing on the competition of the guilds. Offering the benefits of specialization and trade throughout the empire, the guilds connected their large trade networks with populations from every edge of their reach.

Supporting their ever evolving state of politics, the guilds hold frequent elections that favor adaptation in order to maximize prosperity. Also utilizing the nuance of strategy in diplomacy, the guilds prefer to use their negotiating power to leverage favorable contracts to expand their economic empires, as opposed to engaging in more barbaric means like war or piracy. The larger the nation becomes, the more the guilds compete and flourish as new ideas propagate throughout their lands.

Reasons behind the design:

The Guilds of Arkaya are a pacifist diplomat trader faction. The idea with the guild system is to connect diplomacy, the politics in empire management, and trade. As they are a system of competing guilds, the more guilds that are available to the nation, the more competition it creates, which will trickle into benefiting the nation. By accelerating the elections, it will mean changes through out the empire happen more frequently, and promotes competition between the guilds. Ideologies unlock a little bit faster so that more guilds have a chance to pop up in the empire to provide the ability to get their bonuses.

Trade agreements I assume require being at peace, so providing benefits to trade agreements will mean that both nations will want to stay at peace because not only are they getting benefits from a trade agreement, they are getting an increased benefit from trading with a Guilds faction. Also due to competition between the guilds, the most skilled diplomats are presented onto the galactic stage, offering benefits in negotiating deals with nations that they are at peace or in an alliance with. These two parts of the faction affinity work together so that the player is encouraged to deal with peaceful nations and stay at peace because they get extremely beneficial agreements.

Finally, the competition between the guilds motivates other guilds to attempt to take power within the empire and shape it to their will. This competition provides increases to the economy because every guild is attempting to provide their best to the economy in order to out compete every other.

Late game, the Guilds will be an extremely powerful faction to be at peace with as they will provide massive trade bonuses to allies and they will be able to negotiate trade deals much more easily due to reduced influence costs.

Edit: Added last bullet point to the Faction Affinity.

Edit2: Added a Design explanation, moved some affinity elements to traits the faction would use and added another trait that.